Articles: traumatic-brain-injuries.
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Int. J. Dev. Neurosci. · Apr 2016
Longitudinal outcome and recovery of social problems after pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI): Contribution of brain insult and family environment.
Pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) can result in a range of social impairments, however longitudinal recovery is not well characterized, and clinicians are poorly equipped to identify children at risk for persisting difficulties. Using a longitudinal prospective design, this study aimed to evaluate the contribution of injury and non-injury related risk and resilience factors to longitudinal outcome and recovery of social problems from 12- to 24-months post-TBI. 78 children with TBI (injury age: 5.0-15.0 years) and 40 age and gender-matched typically developing (TD) children underwent magnetic resonance imaging including a susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) sequence 2-8 weeks post-injury (M=39.25, SD=27.64 days). At 12 and 24-months post- injury, parents completed questionnaires rating their child's social functioning, and environmental factors including socioeconomic status, caregiver mental health and family functioning. ⋯ Pre-injury environment and SWI did not significantly contribute to outcome at 24-months, however concurrent caregiver mental health and family functioning explained a large and significant proportion of variance in these outcomes. Overall, this study shows that longitudinal recovery profiles differ as a function of injury severity, with evidence for late-emerging social problems among children with severe TBI. Poorer long-term social outcomes were associated with family dysfunction and poorer caregiver mental health at 24-months post injury, suggesting that efforts to optimize the child's environment and bolster family coping resources may enhance recovery of social problems following pediatric TBI.
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Depression is a common complication after traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study aimed to evaluate the risk of hyperlipidemia for new-onset depression after TBI and the role of statin medications using a longitudinal population database. ⋯ Preexisting hyperlipidemia could be an independent predictor of new-onset depression in TBI patients, and TBI patients with preexisting hyperlipidemia who were not treated with statins presented a higher risk of new-onset depression than TBI patients without hyperlipidemia. Our findings may provide some insight into the important role of statin medications in the development of new-onset depression in patients with traumatic brain injury.
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Identifying diffuse axonal injury (DAI) in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) presenting with normal appearing radiological MRI presents a significant challenge. Neuroimaging methods such as diffusion MRI and probabilistic tractography, which probe the connectivity of neural networks, show significant promise. We present a machine learning approach to classify TBI participants primarily with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) based on altered structural connectivity patterns derived through the network based statistical analysis of structural connectomes generated from TBI and age-matched control groups. ⋯ The analysis revealed altered connectivity within a number of intra- and inter-hemispheric white matter pathways associated with DAI, in consensus with existing literature. A mean classification accuracy of 68.16%±1.81% and mean sensitivity of 80.0%±2.36% were achieved in correctly classifying the TBI patients evaluated on the subset of the participants that was not used for the statistical analysis, in a 10-fold cross-validation framework. These results highlight the potential for statistical machine learning approaches applied to structural connectomes to identify patients with diffusive axonal injury.
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The term "post-traumatic migraine" (PTM) has been used to describe post-traumatic headaches (PTHs) that have associated migraine features, but studies of this relationship are lacking. The objective of the present study was to determine whether PTH correlates strongly with migraine symptoms among youth with concussion. ⋯ PTH correlates strongly with other migraine symptoms among youth with concussion, regardless of premorbid headaches. This clustering of migraine symptoms supports the existence of PTM as a distinct clinical entity in some patients.
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Journal of neurotrauma · Apr 2016
Time Course of Coagulation and Fibrinolytic Parameters in Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has long been associated with coagulopathy; however, the time course of coagulation/fibrinolytic parameters in the acute phase of TBI remains unclear. The purpose of the study was to analyze the time course of coagulation/fibrinolytic parameters in the acute phase of TBI and to elucidate parameter relationships to prognosis. We retrospectively evaluated 234 patients with severe isolated TBI with initial blood samples obtained no more than 1 h after injury. ⋯ An upward trend of aPTT on admission and 3 h after injury was also a significant negative prognostic indicator (admission: p = 0.0011; 3 h after injury: p = 0.013). On multivariate logistic regression analysis, which included all initial variables, independent risk factors for poor prognosis included older age (p = 0.0005), low Glasgow Coma Scale score (p < 0.0001), high Abbreviated Injury Score (p = 0.015), aPTT >30.2 sec (p = 0.019), and elevated D-dimer level (p = 0.0005). We concluded that D-dimer is the best coagulation/fibrinolytic parameter to monitor for prediction of outcome.